Sakharam Ganesh Pandit

Sakharam Ganesh Pandit (1875–1959), also known as S. G. Pandit, was an Indian American lawyer and civil rights activist. Pandit immigrated to the United States in 1906 and became a citizen in 1914. In 1923, he represented Bhagat Singh Thind in the Supreme Court case United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind; the Court ruled against Thind and found that Indians were ineligible for United States citizenship. However, Pandit successfully fought against a subsequent attempt to remove his own citizenship, and the federal government thereafter gave up its efforts to denaturalize Indian Americans. Pandit died in Los Angeles in 1959.

Early life and immigration to the United States Born in Ahmedabad, British India to a Gujarati Brahmin family, Pandit received both an undergraduate and a doctoral degree from universities in India. Moving to the United States in 1906, Pandit initially made a living as a spiritual teacher in the tradition of Swami Vivekenanda, lecturing on topics such as the esoteric meanings of the life of Jesus. A 1910 pamphlet for a Kilbourn, Wisconsin class entitled "The Fourth Dimension or a Larger World", for example, depicts him against a mystical backdrop.

American citizenship Pandit applied to become a United States citizen as a resident of California in 1914. The Bureau of Naturalization, charged with implementing the immigration laws of the time, argued that Pandit could not become a citizen as he was not a "free white person" or of African descent, as was required by law. The case stretched on for nine months, but Pandit was granted citizenship by the ruling of Judge Willis Morrison over the Bureau's objection, accepting his designation as white.

Subsequently, Pandit became a lawyer and was admitted to the California bar, as well as being admitted to the federal bar to argue appeals before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In 1920, Pandit married a white woman, Lillian Stringer. As a naturalized US citizen, he renounced his British Indian citizenship, losing his doctoral degree in the process.

Following this case, the Bureau of Naturalization began action to strip Pandit and other Indian Americans of their citizenship, arguing it had been "illegally procured". the Ninth Circuit upheld McCormick's ruling under the doctrine of res judicata. In 1946, the Luce–Celler Act removed racial qualifications for naturalization under United States law, although it set strict nationality-based quotas that limited immigration from many predominantly non-white countries. Pandit died at his home in Los Angeles on August 7, 1959.